"We can lick gravity, but the paperwork is overwhelming" -- Werner Von Braun"It's all fun and games until the potato chips get loose." (said of the ISS by Gizmodo on space.com)"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. A journey of a hundred thousand miles begins with lots of flames, noise and smoke!" -- Emory Stagmer

I read an estimate of 48 oz of water per ton of regolith. Apparently, that's the average for most of the surface of Moon above 10° latitude, with the concentration increasing towards the poles. Another explanation for the hydrogen signature is that this is hydroxyl, one atom of hydrogen with one atom of oxygen.

If Halo fuel works out, then that's a storable fuiel combination that can be made completely Lunar ISRU, since the ingrediants - Aluminum, Hydrogen, and Oxygen - are readily available on Luna.

If enough Carbon and Nitrogen (which may exist on Luna from cometry sources) can be got, a colony can be made self sustaining.

I'd love to see Zubrins face when he found out about this Lunar water...

Well iirc, Robert Zubrin was the guy who came up with the whole idea of ISRU. After all the other people who colonized the islands and continents of the planet of course. But off-planet ISRU is pretty much his brainchild. I'd expect he'll have his hands full helping people to design ISRU equipment for the moon if there is going to be a effort to go in that direction.

If the impact Hypothesis is right, could Ammonia and Carbon Dioxide have been delivered by the same means, and migrated as well to the craters?

I would think that any talk of what could have happened would be mostly open speculation. For a long time, scientists thought that free water (as opposed to chemically-bound water) could not exist on Moon, as it should all have sublimated away. Now, they think that isn't so. Even so, water is different from ammonia (NH3) or CO2, in that it remains a liquid at a higher temperature and lower pressure than a substance of its chemical weight should. Water on Earth should mostly be vapor, like NH3 or CO2, instead of forming liquid oceans. So, if free water is barely present on Moon, it is less likely that NH3 or CO2 would be present.

Building equipment to extract water on the moon will have a spin off on Earth where cheap derivatives of very expensive lunar equipment may end up being developed for use in arid areas where water is scarce.

I think that this discovery will mean that people who thought that the moon was a barren landscape with nothing to offer might have to reconsider. With the hopeful discovery of ice in shielded lunar craters meaning an even easier source of water/oxygen a lunar outpost would seem more likely.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

even if LCROSS itself can't distinguish those lines (which i'm sure it can), HST keck etc will all have spectroscopic capabilities and we'll learn what's there and what's not (to within a small amount of uncertainty due to the sublimation process). i personally am trying to do some spectroscopy on the plume from the observatory here at cornell for a class project. i hope to detect water, but the sky will be light so there's some uncertainty as to whether or not i'll be able to get a clear spectra or even see it (magnitude 4-6 likely). also it'll be a miracle if there's a clear sky in ithaca